Wednesday, January 13, 2010

AR Drone, by Parrot

http://ardrone2.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/how-does-it-work.html#start

The above link has information about AR Drone, which is a flying vehicle made by parrot. It has certain features such as WiFi, which enables it to be controlled from an itouch, or iphone.

Since the guidance system on AR Drone uses Linux, it might be possible to use beagle board for this.
Using beagle board can provide some advantages. AR Drone has 2 cameras for live feed. Since beagle board is capable of producing HD graphics, it might be possible to produce a live HD feed from the cameras. The DSP on the beagle board can be used to encode the live feed and stream it to the viewing device.

Also, beagle board is like a mini-computer, which has many advantages:
  • Since beagle board is a processor, it might be possible to make an Auto-Pilot system for AR Drone.
  • Several image processing programs such as edge detection, obstacle recognition can be used in order to prevent AR Drone from colliding.
  • It might be possible to add an airspeed sensor, altimeter, altimeter which work as input devices for beagle board and can help the AR Drone fly by itself.
  • In short, beagle board can receive inputs from several sensors such as airspeed sensor, altimeter, and process the data received in order to guide the AR Drone by using commanding its control surfaces and speed controllers.

3 comments:

Jason Kridner said...

What about the OMAP3530-based Pixhawk?

Hersh A. said...

It might be possible to do the same thing with OMAP3530-based Pixhawk since its OMAP processor.

Anton said...

http://ardrone2.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/how-does-it-work.html#start ... drohneparrot.blogspot.com